During the first six months of 2022, Amazon deforestation in Brazil reached a record level. An area five times the size of New York City was destroyed. This is evident on Friday from preliminary data from INPE, a Brazilian scientific government institution for research from and from space.
Compared to the first six months of last year, the INPE has seen an increase of 10.6 percent. That’s the highest level since INPE began tracking Amazon deforestation in 2015.
The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world and contains enormous amounts of carbon, which is released when trees are cut down. In this way, deforestation contributes to global warming and climate change.
Deforestation is occurring deeper and deeper in the rainforest. For the first time, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, which lies at the heart of the rainforest, more trees were cut than in any other state.
Lumberjacks set the area on fire
The increase in deforestation this year is accompanied by an unusually high number of wildfires. June saw the highest number of wildfires in the Amazon in the past 15 years. And that will only increase in the coming months, warns Manoela Machado, a researcher on wildfires and deforestation at the University of Oxford.
The number of wildfires in the Amazon usually peaks in August and September. When loggers have finished cutting down trees in a particular area, they often set the site on fire. That means a large number of felled trees is often accompanied by a large number of wildfires, Machado said.
Activists and experts blame far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. He reversed many laws that were supposed to protect the environment and thereby urged loggers, among others, to continue with the felling.
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